Notes from the Editor: What's Up With This Issue?

Regular readers may have noticed that there was no Fall 2003 issue of Talking Leaves. This gap occurred mainly because the editor's (my) other, garden-program-coordination hat this summer became too large (see "Gardening Words on a Rainy Afternoon"), which meant my Talking Leaves hat had to become very small to compensate. (Both hats have now resumed reasonable dimensions, and, having learned from the experience, I am now sworn and equipped to keep them that way.)

As a side benefit, waiting to produce this special double issue, once time made itself available for the work, has resulted in a considerable savings in total printing and shipping costs, as well as what we hope to be a higher quality, more well-rounded magazine.

We plan to continue this less strictly scheduled, more "organic" approach to publishing (already announced in the summer issue), and are also implementing a number of other beneficial changes, which are discussed in the letter on the back cover. Here are some of those changes, and why we are making them:

We are withdrawing the magazine from most newsstand distribution, mainly because of the waste involved. (In the newsstand distribution business, stores overstock, and sometimes the vast majority of copies are destroyed unread.) Also, some wholesale distributors we have been supplying have been extremely unreliable and, through tacked-on fees, have actually been charging us for the privilege of supplying them with magazines (the more we send them, the more money we lose). They are also charging the stores through whom they sell the magazines. We appreciate the need for distributors to stay in business, but this does not seem to us like the way the world should work.

Instead of haggling over dollars in a business that seems rigged against the small publisher (us), we've decided to take a radically different approach. We want READERS and PARTNERS in this publishing venture, not CUSTOMERS that we try to convince to pay a set amount for our product. We want everyone who wants to read Talking Leaves to be able to do so. At gatherings like the annual Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, CA (which we attended again this October), we see the level of interest in and enthusiasm for Talking Leaves, once it is made available to the people who are its natural readers. Those many hundreds of copies that we have been sending into the apparently black hole of wholesale distribution would be much better sent to people who definitely want them.

As a cost-saving measure, we have decided to produce this issue, including the cover as well as the inner pages, entirely on a web press, instead of having a separate cover produced on an offset press. While it entails some trade-offs in materials used and production quality, this decision will allow us to get this issue into many more hands, at greatly reduced cost.

Because Talking Leaves is ultimately a service and resource that we want to share with people, rather than a product we want to sell them, we have decided to offer it on a donation basis rather than for a set subscription price. Certainly, we still need to cover the expenses of creating, printing, and shipping the magazine, but we would like the support we receive to be freely given, according to the ability of each reader to pay, and we would also like Talking Leaves itself to be offered in the spirit of giving, regardless of readers' financial resources. We trust that the financial support we receive will be just as abundant as under the old set-fee system, wherein those who couldn't afford the $20 low-income or $35 regular membership fee often ended up not seeing TL at all. We hope those who want to support what we are doing, and can afford to pay more, will do so. Talking Leaves has had major sponsors in the past (individuals and foundations who liked our work and gave us substantial grants), and we would enthusiastically welcome that kind of sponsorship again.

As for this issue, it evolved organically, with no pre-announced theme. Nevertheless, each piece of writing which follows does flow in some way into the next. I like this issue a lot, and hope you do too. And since I'm out of room, I'll let it speak for itself now.